Thompsons Make More History, Turn Albany Doubters Into Believers

Tewaaraton Trophy finalists Lyle and Miles Thompson broke records, dazzled a national audience and helped Albany dismantle Loyola—the No. 3 seed and top-ranked team in the country for most of the season—to the tune of 13-6, and in the process, likely turned Great Dane doubters into believers.

Showing otherwordly skills, but also demonstrating poise and patience some believed they did not possess, Lyle accumulated eight points to increase his season points total to 122, while Miles’ seven-point day lifted him to 115 points as he, too, surpassed the previous 114-point single-season Division I record set by Steve Marohl of UMBC in 1992.

Beginning the day with 114 points on the season and tied with Marohl, Lyle was marked by fellow Tewaaraton finalist and Upstate New York product Joe Fletcher, arguably the best cover defender in college lacrosse.

It took Lyle only a minute and five seconds to break the record—a record he fell one point short of tying last season—as he drove topside with Fletcher draped all over him, dipped inside, pushed through a slide and scored as he was falling to the ground.

That play would help set the tone for the afternoon, as the Great Danes would hold the lead for all 60 minutes and controlled the pace of play throughout the contest with deliberate offense and its best defensive performance of the season.

The Thompsons—Lyle, Miles and their cousin Ty— had a hand in Albany’s first three-goal run to pull ahead 5-1 midway through the second and then contributed on each tally on a four-goal run that spanned the second and third quarters to increase the lead to 9-3. In the fourth quarter, following a 36-minute rain delay near the end of the third, the Thompsons each scored in another three-goal burst, started by Lyle assisting Ty and closed with a feed to Miles that put the Danes out front 12-5 as the Hounds were reeling on defense and struggling to find a rhythm on offense.

Perhaps the most anticipated matchup of the season, Fletcher was effective in keeping himself posted up against the elusive and slippery Lyle Thompson. But the youngest of the four Thompson brothers showed his uncanny ability to play with his back to the cage, evade stick checks and double teams and to get off passes and shots that simply didn’t seem feasible, including his highlight-reel backhand goal to close the first half.

“Just scouting them, one thing we realized is they don’t slide, they don’t slide off (Fletcher) very often,” Lyle said. “I just kind of took advantage of that. I wasn’t try to blow by him or anything like that. I knew I wouldn’t. I know he plays really good position. I kind of just used my body going up against him, getting myself into where I was a threat and wait for them to make a mistake. I kind of sit in there and wait for a slide, and if they didn’t slide, I’d try to open myself up for a shot. That’s kind of what I did the whole game. I think he did a really good job on me, just playing position. He didn’t throw too much checks. But he stayed in front of me the whole game.”

Fletcher, who despite hailing from the same region as Lyle had never faced him prior to Saturday’s game, spoke with respect for the Thompson Trio in the post-game interview.

“All three of them are crafty players, said Fletcher, the favorite to take home the Schmeisser Award. “They’re all very intelligent. That’s probably the one thing that separates them from other people. They’re athletic, but they know what their defenseman is trying to do. It makes it a chess match.”

When the dust had settled, Lyle had collected three goals and five assists, bringing his season total to 122 points and putting himself atop the single-season points list. Miles, with five goals and two assists, climbed to 115 points on the season, surpassing Marohl’s 114 and the 113 points Lyle compiled in 2013.

While leading the team’s offensive barrage, Lyle’s and Miles’ postgame comments paint the brothers as the spiritual leaders of a Great Danes squad that struggled at times this season before going on seven-win tear and capturing the America East championship.

“A lot of people doubted us … the odds were against us,” Lyle said. “We used that as momentum. We talked all week and it was just about believing. I keep saying this, but I think that is the difference, is believing in each other and in our coaches and in our team. … Right when we won the America East and we found out we were going against Loyola, we believed that we could go up against these guys and get a win.”

Combining with his younger brother as the highest-scoring tandem in the recorded history of Division I lacrosse, Miles now has 79 goals on the season—28 more than the second-leading goal scorer in the country, Duke’s Jordan Wolf. That puts Miles just three goals behind Jon Reese’s single-season Division I goals record of 82, a total amassed by the Yale star back in 1990.

“It’s unheard of,” Albany coach Scott Marr said after his team downed Loyola. “First of all, just to have two guys on the same team go over 100 points in a season, but to have two guys break the record, for them to be brothers, playing with their cousin—right now, it just feels like a Disney movie for us. My thing with them is that they really are very humble about it and they’re just very peaceful kids. They really are doing what they can to help our team win. That’s what they want the most. When they came to Albany four years ago, the words out of their mouths weren’t ‘I want to win the Tewaaraton.’ They wanted to win a national championship. That’s what they’ve been working for.”

On the season, Lyle (48G, 74A), Miles (79, 36) and Ty (39, 11) have combined for a monstrous 287 points on 166 goals and 121 assists. Ambushed with media attention all season, the Thompsons and the Great Danes (12-5) have lived up to the hype, and now move their focus to the NCAA quarterfinals round, where they will meet Notre Dame (10-5).

Regardless of what happens on Long Island next weekend, the Thompsons have etched their names in lacrosse’s history book. And it would be difficult for anyone in the sport to predict the Tewaaraton Trophy being awarded to anyone other than Lyle Thompson—except possibly his brother Miles.

“I think when you’re talking about the award, and I’ve been on the committee with Coach Zim (Don Zimmerman) for seven or eight years now, sometimes there are exceptions,” Marr said. “I think there are exceptions when we go to vote and how it plays. I don’t see how you can deny Miles and Lyle an opportunity to be co-winners of the award. They both broke a record that stood for over twenty-something years. They did that with the focus being on them the entire season. And they still produced the points week in and week out. That’s a phenomenal accomplishment for two guys. … I think they’re both deserving of it.”